Ecstatic crowd hops on Jack White’s ear-splitting runaway train
There was no way a Montreal audience was going to be mistaken for an NPR convention.
That’s what Jack White called the Radio City Music Hall crowd in New York City last Saturday night, not long before he abruptly left the stage after playing for about 45 or 50 minutes. There’s no way of knowing whether that incident played into the performer-audience dynamic at White’s explosive sold-out show Tuesday night at the Olympia: were the fans, for example, desperate to keep White happy and on stage?
It’s possible. Montreal concertgoers are already enthusiastic to a fault, so it’s not a big leap to bring the level up a notch. But it’s at least equally likely White’s supercharged performance was so deeply in the moment that the people simply jumped on the moving train and hung on for dear life, giddy at the dangerous adventure. Seemingly galvanized by the reaction, White gave back in spades, creating a reciprocal energy for 90 minutes.
The collective rapture started before White even set foot on the stage. Pokey La Farge and the South City Three — surely one of the best opening acts to have passed through this city in a very long time — took less than a minute to completely win over the room. As La Farge and band breezed through an acoustic set of Hank Williams-style country and hip-shaking swing, spontaneous cheers and clap-alongs broke out.
White — fronting his allmale band Los Buzzardos (he uses an all-female group, dubbed the Peacocks, on some nights) — wasted no time in upping the ante. Opening with the White Stripes favourite Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, he prowled the stage and did not even pause to catch his breath before sliding right into the superb rocker Missing Pieces.
In an interview before the concert, White said he and the bands work without a set list. That much was obvious. The order of things seemed dictated on the fly by White, with band members watching him like a hawk to keep up. Anchored by the astonishing drummer Daru Jones, who pounded away with a force that gave songs like Seven Nation Army a whole new lease on life, Los Buzzardos were a joy to watch.
Most of the members played more than one instrument, sometimes cutting into the almost metal-ish howl that defined the sound with a tide of violins, mandolin and pedal steel. It worked wonders with beauties like Blunderbuss, the Raconteurs song Top Yourself and Hank Williams’s You Know That I Know.
Tasteful adornment aside, the dominant sound of the night was a bone-rattling, amps-to-11, apocalyptic blues that was, unfortunately, too loud and muddy. Excessive volume, as always, translated into poor sound, leaving White’s voice barely audible during most numbers. The decibel overkill made the mystery journey of a noodling jam, built around Stop Breaking Down, less appeal- ing than it might have been. In fact, one began to wonder after a while where White was going with it — and for how long.
Still, the band’s feral energy ultimately took some of the sting out of the sonic deficiencies and occasional selfin dulgences. Hotel Yorba, for example, seemed to barrel along at twice the speed of its original version, challenging the delighted fans to keep pace in the singalong.
Some unexpected pleasures came near the end. After the surprise selection of the dark and haunting Two Against One, which he sang on the Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi project Rome, White charmed the audience with yet another White Stripes classic, the irresistibly catchy We’re Going to Be Friends.
It came off as a sincere gesture of affection. And it was more than returned.